Hickey and Boggs — each is the kind of name which must expect a lifelong siege of puns, nonsense rhymes, snide pronunciations; together they sound like a partnership in a realty agency. Virtually the movie's total attitude toward private eyes is exposed in the selection of the heroes' names which give the movie its title. These guys are sadsacks, undernourished and underemployed, being devoured by Life, by Progress, by the City, or you-blame-it. This somber aspect might come as a small surprise since, wearing dog tags as cumbersome as Hickey and Boggs, the heroes might have turned out to be slapstick sidekicks. Especially since the casting department's remarriage of Bill Cosby and Robert Culp encourages recollection of this twosome's glib, rhythmic re-bop on the defunct "I Spy" TV show. The cocky camaraderie, modelled for years by that team, is herewith decisevely buried, and mourning is Sincerely discouraged. Their new on-screen relationship is a professional one, not much else. The invincible fraternity of the "Spy" characters is replaced with a barely familiar acquaintance ("Tell me, have you ever killed anybody?"). As insurance against the actors' gliding into too much giddy gracefulness, there are Cosby's plump Cigar, making his speech mushy, and Culp's eyeglasses, and their baggy, off-the-rack suits.

Down several flights of stairs from galvanized nameplates like Spade, Marlowe, and Hammer, Hickey and Boggs are basement dwellers. Most of the downhill slippage can be credited to their guilty self-consciousness about working as private detectives in 1972. The Hickey character (Cosby) at one point hops onto the sentiment that runs through current action movies, announcing that men of action are, like buffaloes, an endangered species. "It's time to get out," he meditates aloud. "This job isn't about anything any more," (This line, delivered amidst an ominous hush, is about the only incident of dialogue slopping over the narrow boundaries of the story proper.) What distinguishes Hickey and Boggs, just slightly, from their detective ancestors is the loss of insolent self- righteousness. 111e traditional detective's snobbery about everybody from clients to cops is squashed to a new low, mainly because the traditional verbal facility of wisecracks or first-person storytelling has been mislaid. Hickey and Boggs have a swallowed-up manner of mouthing off, lowering their heads and looking halfsorry to be forced into verbal counterpunching. Preferably they remain altogether mum. So, the events they pass through are permitted to achieve a sort of uncontrolled, unslanted factuality. Such as: while Hickey's kinky client ogles the kids on playground swings, Hickey stays shut about it; so, rather than being filtered through a first-person commentator with the pious bias of a Lew Archertype, it is witnessed as neutral fact.

At first sight these dismal partners are perched On barstools in unimaginative slumps, discussing an unpaid phone bill during a Commercial break on the TV set Over the bar. The scenic elements — a familiar dimly lit bar, a boxing match on the TV, the drinks and smokes — suggest that these characters travel in Brooves so well-worn that their lives must be chiefly skips and slides and static. Following the Opening dialogue, it rapidly becomes apparent that Boggs suffers from a light limp and a heavy drinking problem. And that Hickey's regular SportCoat is a poor fit, riding too high on wrists and rump; besides, it is a gaudy ersatz green and a mismatch, for color Coordination, with Boggs' ersatz blue. And that both men are split from their wives and they brood over it. And that their rasping, rusting cars are in a slow-motion race to the junkyard.

This quick compilation of flaws (their ex-wives could surely pour on another dozen Without pause) might easily have come across less as character: sketching than henpecking. However, One of the dominant attributes of this level. headed movie is its reticence. Characters' defects, and affects, are positioned in front of the Viewer but never pointed at in plain words or close-up inspection. Boggs' brief turn with a call girl is a short, Wordless affair, and the woman's face is not seen; so, the event acquires a kind of twilight reality, like something that happens during a midnight awakening and can't be recalled clearly the next day. Later, Boggs' visit to the nightclub Where his ex-wife does a nude go-go stint risks becoming embedded in bathos. But the scene is steered toward nebulousness. It is hard enough, on one hand, to translate Culp's boozy expression — siily plastered smile and watery eyes; and he is ripped from his runway seat by his disgusted partner before his expression evolves into anything legible. But, beyond that, the playing of the dancer passes by all of the standard sentimentalities about the fallen broads Who inhabit barrooms. Shimmying ferociously, she registers as a blur of artificial beauty effects-honey blond hair and layers of cosmetics. The anonymous actress (does the voice actually belong to the face?) plays the part for hard feelings and malice, tossing Boggs a witless taunt— "Eat your heart out" — and faint farewell — "Get Yourself killed." For the type of scene, the absence of any heart-stomping eye-contact between the two is notable.

The amount of time allotted to doing inventory of the heroes' fumbled lives is highly questionable allowance, considering how firmly nailed down these dismal personalities are. At least since John Le Carre's novels began turning into films, detectives, spies and cops, no matter how slick at their jobs, are understood from the starting gate to be bloody bastards in personal relationships and bachelor-incompetents on their own. Some random, rank items from detectives' pantries: and overused Chemex coffee filter ("Harper"), a stockpile of Swanson frozen dinners ("BulJitt"), a box of Corn Flakes mislocated in the office files ("Billion Dollar Brain").

All the slices from the private lives of Hickey and Boggs, even though they are of -a-piece with the understated seediness and melancholy of the movie as a whole, taste stale simply for their musty conformnity to stereotypes. (It's a gauge of the movie's overall conservatism that it didn't feel free to skip the detectives' characterizations altogether.) It probably would have been better had the heroes' images been tilted more toward the breeziness and disarray of the faceless call girl and the streaky go-go dancer. Probably all the identity required for Hickey and Boggs, in order to make the story work, is their occupation. Through their legwork, their cars' soaring odometers, their visits to potential "leads" who have vanished or are uncooperative or are found dead, their time-consuming detours to the police station, and their after-hours unwinding over stiff drinks, Hickey and Boggs measure in miles and in moodiness the diffusion and scurry of urban living. Their assignment amounts to a cheerless survey of a modern metropolis, its yawning disparities and its muted dispair. The sunny, populous beach where Hickey accepts this case and the misty secluded one where it comes to a noisy end. The Los Angeles Coliseum on Sunday afternoon, crammed with Rams fans, and the same stadium on Monday afternoon, evacuated. The unprepossessing flower shop run by doomed Chicanos and the cliffside estate donated by its eccentric owner for the use of a platoon of black militants. And the continual procession of unknown faces, looking mean or deceptively sweet or overly painted or frightened or whatever. which are as hard to assimilate as the daily rush of faces along Hollywood Blvd. Passing through unfamiliar people's lives and environs, the pair of private eyes are much like tourists; and their experience registers the superficiality and lingering dissatisfaction of the too-hurried wayfarer. Which is, in short) the commonplace urban experience.

What Hickey and Boggs seems to be concerned with, over and above the fairly intriguing particulars of plot and character, is a common sense of urban dread. In this murder-mystery context, the common, queasy, indefinate sensation develops from the lonely separation of various interest-groups in the L.A. underworld, which are drawn toward one another uncontrollably, drawn on a collision course through intensely felt barriers of suspicion and hostility, drawn by a partially obscure plot evolving from a gangland doublecross and a cache of $400,000 in hot money. In this affair, the detective,' importance, which is not increased by all the detailing of their private lives, is simply that they enter the scene at the same point as the moviegoer. They know nothing of the case's background-a bank holdup in Pittsburg the year before; a shootout killing six; the jailing of a traitor to the Oranization; and this marked man's girlfriend, of unknown whereabouts, who has harbored the stolen, patiently awaiting her man's parole. Proceeding methodically down a list of names connected in the past to the elusive girlfriend, Hickey and Boggs are foragers into the tanglement; their daily legwork traces the unapparent connections between the characters. But, following the same list of names is a trio of "soldiers" (an appealing piece of argot for hired killers), who start out half-a-length behind the detectives; more efficient, the "soldiers" quickly catch up.

The plainest clue to the movie's concern with urban plight comes during the credits at movie's end. There, the cast of characters is grouped under restrictive labels like The Organization, The Law, The Fences, The Chicanos. Throughout the story, each of these discreet groups maintains the static position and self-interest of a social class. The several independent factions, each one angling only for its own advantage, and the high population within each group, suggest the pressure of competitive urban jostle and overcrowdedness. With the alternating images of well- tailored respectability (the Organization brass), heavily equipped overconfidence (the "soldiers"), honey-tongued pimping (the fences), nearly hopeless apprehensiveness (the Chicanos), underdog scrappiness (Hickey and Boggs), and frustrated authority (the police), the film describes a power structure that is just complex enough to stand as a model of the general urban struggle. The feeling of crisis (doom is just around the corner) finds its prettiest expression in the "Silent, suffering face of an actress identified as simply Carmen. When her dark glasses, a thin shield, are removed, her small panicked eyes and her perpetually clenched bearing are sufficient by themselves to mark this woman as the one with the unwanted responsibility of safekeeping the loot. She and her fellow Chicano conspirators have a spare handful of lines between them; but the movie's opening line, spoken to no one, belongs to her. And although it is one of those grating bilingual lines that are an awkward compromise between ethnic accuracy and the low-rated mentality of American filmgoers, it immediately clarifies the movie's stricken, bomb-shelter atmosphere: "Madre de dios, protect us now."

The grave Chicano faces, silently gazing into one another's eyes-they have no allies of course- looking for some hint of possible relief, are a recurring image to keep the tone urgent. Obviously, the likeliest relief for their increasingly stiffened manner, their remorse, and their pessimism, is death. Their children, always below eye level, catch no sign of the crushing situation. Children are used as-bystanders during much of the secretive maneuvering in the plot, but the chance to underline any of the usual ideas about the meaning of children in this tough world is resisted, for the best. (Certainly no unusual ideas are brought up either. The film's prevailing principle is to adhere to a narrow path. So, while no very adventurous steps are tried. at least no faulty ones are committed.)

The movie's dramatics-the hush-hush negotiations, attempted payoffs, stakeouts, ambushes-grow credibly, inevitably out of this mortal struggle from which no one is allowed to resign. No matter how profound may be anyone's regret or unreadiness, the play goes ahead. A choice among alternatives is not available in this urban ritual, where one's initial step means an irretraceable commitment. For the private detectives, whose involvement seems accidental, there is a strong inclination, after every step, to hibernate in the handiest bar. These easygoing establishments, dark and quiet and public, feel safer than the open street, and safer than home or the office, where Hickey and Boggs are sitting ducks for an attack or a set-up by anyone who can use the phone directory. But, in response to the offer of a $25,000 reward and to the melodramatic reflexes of their profession they follow the "leads" in the case like a dutiful daily itinerary.

Pacing, under Culp's first feature·length directing try, is very steady, pressured. Which means, for one thing, that there is a respectful interval between killings. (A relative restraint is excercised throughout the action episodes-usually they are a lot of noise, running and shooting that cause little bodily harm-so that, when the body count reaches nine in the final seashore shootout, it seems a justifiable binge.) The camera pursues a slavish closeness to the plotline and the people along it, almost never dropping back to pick out a handsome scenic composition. Hardly an image could be pulled from sequence and stand on its own ; and this should be understood as a compliment to the movie's strict obedience to its self-imposed narrow track. Too much choreographed action, composed photography, or eccentric acting would poke holes in the omnipresent oppressiveness (and smog) in the air.

Not unexpected in an actor-turned director, Culp's attention seems to go toward extracting glimmers of humanity out of brief lapses in his actors' guarded. stern images. How fragile the characters' maturity, how close they are to boyishness, if not infantilism, is hinted in momentary flashes. Notice the smile on Hickey's face when a practical joke on his estranged wife backfires and sends her into enraged bitchiness-a pathetic smile that is part amusement, part apology, part embarrassment. And notice the high schoolish hero jacket worn by the shockingly youthful chief of police detectives. And the pretty, blond Ivy League cleanness of a shockingly youthful Organization bigwig. And the horseplay glee with which the muscle boy of the "soldiers" carefreely beats up a victim; or again, when the prospective victim is not found at home, the gameplaying frivolity with which he smashes the kitchen dishes. And the ostentatious tantrum which the Organization'S head man is obligated to stage, for the benefit of his calmly patient underlings, after his "soldiers" have fouled up a job, each word bellowed childishly at equal volume-"Explain it! I want to hear how they missed! What was it? Dumbness? Yellow?"